The average person in the US (and I’d imagine in most of the west as well) has essentially always seen Afghanistan as a terrorist state and/or a failed, clan-like state where ethnic groups clash in the background of a weak central government. Given this, as well as the fact that Afghanistan is disintegrating as we speak, it is amazing that 50 years ago it was a stable nation that many tourists visited. How is it that a nation that was able to hold itself together throughout the early Cold War up until the mid 1970s end up as the precise definition of a failed state in our present geopolitical environment?
One thing I really want to point out is the current situation in Afghanistan parallels the Soviet withdrawal
On the 27th of April 1978 a coup d’état happened in Afghanistan that would go down in history as the ”Saur Revolution”; Saur being the Persian word for the month for April. This coup d’état was the second of the decade for Afghanistan. In 1973, the King of Afghanistan was overthrown by Mohammed Daoud Khan the former Prime Minister of Afghanistan and the King’s cousin. Mohammed Daoud Khan’s government established a single-party republic that was politically left-leaning. The reasons for the 1973 coup are many but some reasons to cite are ethnic issues and failures of the monarchy to achieve reforms. However, Mohammed Daoud Khan’s time in office was short-lived when his government was overthrown by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) which professed a Marxist ideology. This new party began to established ties with Moscow and in doing so began to alienated some its native population. Soon the rural population of the majority Sunni Islam country; feeling threaten by the “atheistic Marxists” in power, launched a rebellion against PDPA rule. On 15 March 1979 an Afghan army division stationed in the western city of Herat mutinied against the PDPA, massacring Soviet advisers and their families living in the city, ending with a death toll of 5,000 after PDPA loyalists put the revolt down. Soon after this the PDPA asked the USSR; its Marxist ally, for help to defend its political hold on the country. The reasons for the Soviet’s going to war are many, but as Artemy Kalinovsky summarized in Decision-Making and the Soviet War in Afghanistan: From Intervention to Withdrawal that Soviet policymaking during the decade came from a narrow circle within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Politburo. Kalinovsky states that this narrow circle believed that a failure of socialism in Afghanistan would damage the Soviet Union’s position and authority as leader of the Communist movement and supporter of “national liberation” movements. He also states that due to positive reports on ground in Afghanistan; the Politburo believed it could transform Afghanistan, stabilize the government, and achieve international recognition of the communist government in Kabul. These listed factors made the Soviet Union reluctantly mobilise its massive military assets into the mountainous country of Afghanistan to defend its ideological ally. The Soviets; like the United States in Vietnam and 21st century Afghanistan, first sent more military advisors to simply train the loyalist soldiers. However, this proved unfruitful as many soldiers simply deserted or mutinied like in Herat. So on the 24th of December 1979 the Soviet Armed Forces launched an intervention of the 40th Army group into Afghanistan numbering 75,000 total. The Soviets expected this conflict to last only a few months. What was supposed to be a few months turned into a 10 year bloody conflict. The Soviet Union’s strategy during the war was to not focus on the rural areas of the country, but to consolidate its forces in urban centres were PDPA power was strongest and secure the transportation networks of the country with the primary focus on using air and armoured vehicle assets to achieve operations and to primarily focus on operations to instill fear into the rural civilian population. The rationale for this largely indirect strategy was the Mujahideen.
The Mujahideen is where the USA comes into the picture of the current situation in Afghanistan. But first who were the Mujahideen? The Mujahideen were resistance fighters who mainly came from the eastern part of Afghanistan and Pakistan with the majority being of the Pashtun ethnicity. Many were jihadist believeing this war was a holy war in the defense of the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) against Marxism and Atheism. The Mujahideen were initial only actively supported by Pakistan, who greatly fear that by having a Soviet-allied neighbor to the west and the already Soviet supported India to its east would undermine its national sovereignty. With such little intial international support; the Mujahideen had to rely heavily on guerrilla warfare tactics in the mountainous passes of Afghanistan; focusing their attacks on passing Soviet conveys. This caused the war to be in a precarious balance with Mujahideen winning mostly in their hit and run skirmishes, and Soviets gaining military advances with its armoured vechiles like the T-62 main battle tank or Mil Mi-24 gunship helicopter popularly known to westerners as the Hind-D. The use of advanced Soviet weaponary in the conflict was partial how the US decided to get more deeply involved in the war. In the first weeks of the war, the United States had only given very limited military support to the Mujahideen and condemned the Soviet conflict through rhetoric with such statements as The Carter Doctrine of January 1980 in which President Jimmy Cater stated “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force”. The limited military aid mentioned was a plan drafted by the Central Intelligence Agency known as “Operation Cyclone”. The United States would spend hundred of millions of US taxpayer dollars to train and arm the Islamic fighters in Afghanistan; having some flown to Virginia to be trained in sabotage and espionage. However as mentioned beforehand this support during the first half of the war only went so far; as the Soviets still had air superiority over the Afghan fighters. Also the US did not supply the Afghans with any US engineered weaponry, but only non-US weapons like Kalashnikov rifles and RPG-7’s supplied by China. These weapons had to be distributed by Pakistani intelligence agents as to cover US involvement as greatly as possible. In 1986 however, the United States decided to start supplying more advance American weaponry to the Mujahedeen primarily the FIM-92 Stinger. This push for more advance weaponry was spear fronted by lobbyist from the conservative lobby Free the Eagle and members of the defense department most notably Michael Pillsbury.
As stated earlier the only channel the United States had to supply the Mujahideen fighters was through Pakistan. President Zia was reluctant to introduce US made weapons into the conflict fearing that the Soviets would retaliate. Charlie Wilson who after years defending Zia back home in the States put his fears to rest. On February 15, 1989 after years of military setbacks and domestic troubles caused by such programs as Glasnost and Perestroika the last Soviet troops were pulling out of Kabul. The jihad fought by the Mujahideen was won. In 1991; the year the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was disbanded, the United States viewed the Afghan-Soviet war as one of the greatest victories in the nation’s convert-operation’s history. It had succeeded in humiliating the Soviet Union, sowing seeds to aide in her destruction, defended America’s hegemony over the Middle East, and did so with mostly untrained guerilla fighters. However in 1991 few could have seen how much of a mistake it was spending so many millions of dollars in the foreign conflict. For the new enemy that rose for ashes of the “Soviet Empire” could arguable be considered much more dangerous than the Soviets ever were. After the Soviet-Afghan War ended; Afghanistan was in chaos. In 1992 the communist government of Afghanistan finally collapsed. In the absence of any powerful central government, Afghanistan was carved up into petty fiefdoms controlled by former Mujahideen fighters, who thanks to the United States and Pakistan had plenty of firearms and ammunition to control their new fiefdoms. These fiefs ruled their territories with their own laws and taxes. David B. Edwards; a Social Science professor at Williams College in Massachusetts who specializes in near east studies, was in Afghanistan at the time described how you couldn’t drive 10-20 miles without being stopped to pay a “tax” to the local warlord. He also described how these fiefs would kidnap boys and girls to be slaves. So in this chaos caused by withdrawal of the Soviet 40th Army, a new faction of former mujahideen arose disenfranchised by this chaos in their motherland. This group started to fight back against these fiefs to try and restore “peace” in Afghanistan. This group of young men gain support among their countrymen due to their quest for a stable and peaceful homeland. This group was the Taliban which means student in Arabic. In 1995, the Taliban finally seized power and started to implement extreme fundamentalist Islamic polices. This was partial inspired by the large Wahhabi influence that entered the country during the Soviet war through the large amount of foreign aid and Mujahdieen volunteers coming from Saudi Arabia and Gulf states. This puritanical Islam quickly became unpopular with the population. These fundelmentalist polices banned virtually all women’s rights that had been gained under communist rule, forced ethnicities with non-Islamic names to change their names, forced grooming habits, and banned certain books etc.
After 9/11 the US finally had to “clean house” in Afghanistan. But in doing so made many of the same mistakes the Soviet Union had made. Such as relying on local Afghan troops to be able to handle most direct operations by themselves. Ultimately by pulling out of Afghanistan the US made the error of creating a power imbalance. Same as what happened after the Soviets withdrew.
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Hi! I can help a bit with the recent history since the Soviet stuff has already been covered.
I do want to clear up something about the Mujahideen, though. A LOT of them were foreign fighters from Egypt and Lybia. The book, Arabs at War in Afghanistan, is an interview between Dr. Leah Farrall, an Aussie nat sec specialist, and one of the important lieutenants from the Mujahideen, Mustafa Hamid. He talks about how some rich Saudis and the Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI) put up funds and materiel for the fighters from Arab countries. After a point in the fighting (the Battle of Jaji) the Arab leaders began excluding the Afghans from training camps and resources because they didn't trust the Afghans. There were still Afghan mujahideen, but they did their own thing against the Soviets (this will be important to remember in three paragraphs).
Almost the entire Mujahideen movement was manipulated by the ISI based on who they thought they could control. The US suckered themselves into the situation because they thought they could beat the Soviets in Afghanistan, but the only means of contact they had to the mujahideen was the ISI. So the ISI decided who got the US resources when. The ISI puppeteered so many parties because they were/are terrified that in the event of a war with India they have no place to fight besides Karachi and no means of drawing a fight out. They couldn’t/can’t control northern Pakistan, so they decided to make Afghanistan a puppet state through the mujahideen (and later Taliban). They fucked up.
It's not to give a pass to the US (if you really read historical stuff this is pretty on brand for them) but to clarify that the big evil boogeyman isn't always the immediate threat and sometimes is just a cover for the real players.
After the Soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan went right back into civil war. At this point the country was divided into four major parts - the western power in Herat (led by Ismael Khan), the Tajik-populated government in Kabul (led by Burhanuddin Rabbani), the northern Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum, the cluster of ex-mujahideen in the east around Kandahar, and a small southeastern territory controlled by Gulbuddin Hikmetyar.
These parties fought for another six years (1988 to 1994) for power over all of Afghanistan. However, every time one alliance made it to Kabul or began to win battles, the alliance would disintegrate and the cycle of violence would start all over again. Kabul was a battleground for most of this period and the fact it’s still around is incredible (my opinion, not an objective fact/event).
This ‘dance’ ended in 1994 when the Taliban surged out of Pakistan, through Kandahar province and into Afghanistan. The original Taliban (I have no real idea how it’s run now since they’ve lost so many commanders and fighters over the last two decades) was founded by a group of young refugee Afghan men whose parents had fled Afghanistan and settled in Pakistan. Pakistan didn’t want these refugees and provided very little for them, so the families ended up settling in the northern/western areas of Pakistan.
These areas were absolute chaos. The ex-mujahideen that lived there had almost complete power, but used none of it to structure their territory, choosing instead to make profit for themselves. This left the children of the refugees in a very vulnerable state surrounded by nothing to order their worlds besides the madrassas.
These kids saw the ideal Islamic world that Muhammed had envisioned as a replacement for the maelstrom that swirled around them (pretty hard to blame them to be honest). As they learned to fight (many boys were used in the struggle for power in this region), they began to talk about a new, stable Afghanistan they could live in, one obviously inspired by the fundamentalism of the madrassas. They named themselves the Taliban (plural of talib, a word for an Islamic student).
The ISI (YUP IT GETS BETTER) saw these kids (now men) as useful tools to stabilize and control Afghanistan. The Pakistani government saw an opportunity to open a trade route from the south into Central Asia. In 1994, they planned to cooperate with the main warlord, Hikmetyar, and bribe the smaller ones into opening a secure route for trade. This blew up, almost literally, when the Taliban, led by Mullah Omar (charismatic Taliban leader), attacked a checkpoint controlled by Hikmetyar, then (aided by the ISI) took the ammo dump at Spin Baldak which held 18,000 AKs, artillery pieces, vast amounts of ammo, and vehicles.
With the ISI’s help, the Taliban rolled through Kandahar province and took the city. They set up a toll road and provided security for the Pakistan traders heading back and forth from the north which provided the Taliban with an important source of income*. Within three months, they were outside of Kabul and Herat. They also controlled 12 of the 31 Afghan provinces.
In 1995, the warlords in Afghanistan formed a tentative alliance to drive the Taliban back*. The ISI attempted to lure certain warlords (Hikmetyar and Dostum chiefly) into an alliance with the Taliban against the Kabul/Herat alliance. It didn’t work because the Taliban refused to attend the talks.
The Taliban took Jalalabad and Kabul in 1996 then tried to take the northern capital, Mazar-e-Sharif, later in the year. They were repulsed in a bloody victory for Dostum and the Uzbeks. The Taliban tried again in 1998 to take Mazar and succeeded this time which lead to two days of retributive carnage in the city.
The Taliban success emboldened one of their distinguished guests, a mujahedeen financier named Osama bin Laden, to attack US targets in Kenya and Tanzania. The retributive US strike aimed at bin Laden actually killed a bunch of Pakistani and Afghan Taliban trainees. The Taliban organized demonstrations outside the UN offices in Kabul and Mullah Omar lashed out at the United States for the attack, insisting the Taliban would never give bin Laden to the US.
Eventually the civil war was fought to a relative stalemate. After several promising pushes from the Kabul alliance, some betrayals (notable Dostum’s betrayal of Khan, forcing Khan out of Herat and enabling Taliban control of the province) and assassinations of key military leaders led to the breakdown of the Kabul alliance.
Edit: some grammar
Second edit: proper credit for Dr. Farrall
Some good comments already but I do feel there is some missing context here.
Not an expert, but I have some familiarity with tribal societies and international relations in South Asia. The Afghan case is one I've been periodically reviewing, and honestly, for people that have been watching closely what's unfolding now is, unfortunately, not a surprise.
I'll start by saying posts covering events covering the formation of the Afghan Republic in 1973 and and the socialist coup in '78 & subsequent Soviet invasion are good. I think reader's need to understand - and this was a critical lack of insight that has tripped up both Soviet and Western attempts to intervene in the country - that Afghanistan's history goes back to ancient times and didn't just start with the Afghan Republic. The tensions that Afghanistan faces now, in many ways, are the same tensions that stymied Afghan governments through the 20th century.
The other thing readers should understand is that Afghanistan is a very multi-ethnic state, with strong tribal institutions that have variously adopted different influences on things like family life, business practice, religion and politics to different degrees from the outside world. There are more than a dozen ethnic groups with different - though often overlapping - customs, dialects or even languages.
To paint a broad picture of what a tribal organization means for the unfamiliar, I'll start with the Pashtuns, who are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan(~40%) and who have most often been associated with Afghanistan itself and its ruling dynasties. Composed of hundreds of tribes, the Pashtun's are organized into 4 tribal confederacies(spread over the region, not just Afghanistan). Those confederacies themselves have their own prominent leaders and tribes, who in turn have relations with affiliated lesser tribes. Larger tribes have their own prominent leaders and families - in some cases sub-divided into very large families or factions/alliances. Individual families, or even people may have relations with multiple tribes - and may act as one or several of these depending on their specific situations. Indeed tribal organizations themselves can, to varying degrees depending on circumstance, look more like businesses, political parties than what most Westerners probably think of as 'tribes'.
But these are also very rough structures I'm sketching here: the confederacies,tribes, families can basically conduct their own foreign relations with any other group or person as they are able to. So you can have tribes from one confederacy who've basically been working as part of another Confederacy for generations...and while some of them might be basically dead to the original group, others might still have good relations(or are good with some & not others: usually with some significant backstory as to why).
Prominent families and tribes owe much of their wealth & influence to being able to patronize other tribes & the blurred lines between personal relationships, business, religion & politics provides a lot of avenues to do this; or to mend damaged relations.
One of the pitfalls of foreigners getting involved in such a society is that, if you cross someone in personal life, business or politics you likely have no idea who that person is tied in with, or what backroom deals your actions may be disrupting. These can have quite significant consequences to the lives of those affected & suddenly your presence is no longer welcome.
Long before the soviets came on scene though, Afghans were already being pulled in different directions. Afghanistan has always been a crossroads - it occupies strategic passes through the mountains that allow it to serve as a land conduit between Tibet, India, Persia and the Caucasus. In modern times that puts it between Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan/India. In addition to its own internal issues, Afghanistan's recent history since 1800 has been characterized by periods of competition between great powers. First the British Empire looking to curb Russian influence in Afghanistan but also with Persia. The result was three wars with Britain, with Russia and Iran both becoming involved - with all sides seeking to court Afghani tribes into helping tip the balance.
The second war resulted in Afghanistan becoming a British protectorate. The third won it's independence with the Treaty Rawalpindi in 1919.
This did not mean Afghanistan became relatively modern, or relatively stable though.
The 1925 Khost Rebellion, 1928-29 Afghan Civil War and the 1944-47 Afghan Tribal Revolt were all in living memory to many individuals who played key roles during the 1970's. During this period, both the monarchy and later republic walked a tightrope trying to mollify prominent leaders and tribes even as they tried to enact reforms that would usurp tribal prerogatives for the central government.
As Britain's influence waned, however, Afghanistan found itself with a western educated elite caught between Pakistan - whose Pashtun population exceeds Afghanistans own and the juggernaught that was the USSR. Relationships and business connects and trade between prominent Pashtuns were not only critical to their own prosperity and influence, but also important for Afghanistan as a whole as a landlocked country. Daoud's pivot to closer ties with the USSR, coupled with moves to 'unite' the Pashtuns - which appear to have been regarded as unsolicited by many Pashtuns, and alarming to the government in Pakistan - played a key role in undermining the legitimacy of Daoud's Republic. Also under the both republic & monarchy, attempts to bring recalcitrant tribes in line with government reforms involved various forms of back-rooms deals, coupled with applications of oppressive violence or, said another way: corruption that undermined rule of law, and brutal repression.
Events of the previous 100 years in Afghanistan are often overlooked in the West, but not in Afghanistan. Make no mistake, Afghanis remember, that, for instance in 1928 it was Tajiks who invaded Kabul and deposed a Pashtun king in favour of a Tajik one - with assistance from prominent Pashtun's. Both remember when that king tried to strip privileges from Pashtuns to Tajik loyalists and was in turn deposed in favour of a member of the old dynasty. These are big rivalries, but there are also lesser ones, involving competition over lands, resources and personal disputes that emerge or have been going on for some time that can still complicate matters in Afghanistan.
They remember which tribe sent soldiers that massacred their village in which conflict. They remember - for instance - when Ahmad Shah Massoud cut a deal with the retreating Soviets to let them retreat through mountain passes he controlled so that he could give himself an advantageous position vs other factions in the push to Kabul. They remember which leaders and tribes stayed loyal to whom, and betrayed whom for British, or Soviet, or American money. They remember which tribes or leaders took land from them, and which ones abused children or robbed everyone on the highways.
Amidst all this Afghanistan was beset by all of the same tensions that characterize most countries trying to transition into a modern industrialized state. Europe's own transition from the late 1700's through the 1800's was marked by violent revolutions, civil wars and riots. The 30 Years War is not without parallels to the struggles happening as Islam confronts what it means to be Islamic in a modern context. Nativist fears of creeping foreign influence destroying local ways of life are not unique to Afghanistan - there are clear similarities in the West right now - but we can also see them play out in the tumultuous histories of China and Japan. The struggle to reform outdated institutions under outside pressure, while managing nativist reactions to Western influence has rarely been done successfully: and never smoothly.
In a more modern context you might look at another multi-ethnic state like Nigeria to appreciate some of the difficulties Afghanistan's government likely still would have faced even without the prospect of massive Soviet, Pakistani or American interventions in their politics.
The rise of political islam - with substantial international support networks of its own - is a conflating factor(except Nigeria, which is different too in that it has competing Islamic and Christian populations). Afghanistan's unique geography also sets it apart from other cases: a crossroads nation, occupying strategic passes along with extremely rugged, difficult to access mountainous terrain. Afghanistan is also landlocked, limiting its access to outside markets and forcing it to rely on its immediate neighbours and land connections for trade; Afghanistan doesn't have many easy routes to wealth that don't cross another, more powerful, nation's borders. Close union with Pakistan may bring some stability, but Afghanistan remains a poor landlocked country, with its strategic crossroads status being something of a poor substitute; especially for a junior power stuck between far more powerful rivals. The Tajiks, and Tajikstan are another confounding factor. The second most populous ethnicity in Afghanistan, occupying the northern borders and lands around Kabul, are fairly well off compared to other regions, and have close ties with the Tajikstan government, and connections to both the West and Russia. The difficulties the American backed government faced along the Pakistani border are the same difficulties the Taliban will face along their northern borders.
These are all reasons any government in Afghanistan has its work cut out for it. And while there's no question the invasions - especially the proliferation of weapons that came with them - pushed Afghanistan over the edge: the ethnic tensions and rivalries that have kept it there were already present. They also happen to be uniquely difficult for outsiders to address.
I really would have to question your statement that Afghanistan was relatively stable 50 or 60 years ago. On the surface, this premise seems to be true but looking in more detail at not just the Afghan state but also the country's various tribes and their relationship with each other and the Afghan state paints a more complicated picture. Since previous posts have already gone into the 1973 coup, this post will mostly focus on around the 1960s and the years immediately preceding and succeeding it.
In 1959, 2 incidents of revolts and rioting occurred, one revolt Khost during December where the Mangal, a Pashtun tribe took up arms in response to a building of a road that threatened a sources of income and their independence. This rebellion was soon crushed by the Afghan military, a stark contrast to a decade prior where the military found it difficult to put down the Tribal Revolts of 1944-47, showing that the Afghan state now had the capacity to rapidly put down local revolts. In Kandahar, riots occurred due to protests from landlords about changes to land taxation and the opening of local cinemas to women. This unrest was quelled through the appointing a general as both the military commander and governor of the province that Kandahar was situated in by then Afghan Prime Minister, Daud Khan.
While these would the last notable instances of mass revolts and rioting against the Afghan state until the 1970s, this did not all of a sudden put a stop to intertribal warfare and disobedience and agitation by tribes towards the state during this period. In 1968, there was warfare between the Mangal and the Jaji tribes. Two years later in 1970, there was reportedly agitation among the Shinwari tribe.
So while yes, Afghanistan did not suffer from as much from rebellions as it had during the 1940s, it wasn't exactly relatively stable either around the 1960s and the years immediately preceding and succeeding it. A revolt, multiple acts of disobedience by tribes towards the Afghan government and intertribal warfare still occurred in Afghanistan at this time.
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